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Duke University Press Is an Anti-Israel Defamation Machine
Clocktower Quad at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Photo: Warren LeMay/Wikimedia Commons.
Duke University Press has recently published two journal articles that could be construed as calling for the destruction of Israel.
In 2024, the Critical Times journal, a Duke publication, printed Layal Ftouni’s article that concluded, “For a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.”
In April of 2025, the South Atlantic Quarterly, another Duke publication, carried an anonymous article that similarly concluded, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) explains:
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is an antisemitic slogan commonly featured in anti-Israel campaigns and chanted at demonstrations.
This rallying cry has long been used by anti-Israel voices, including supporters of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], which seek Israel’s destruction through violent means. It is fundamentally a call for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, territory that includes the State of Israel, which would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state. It is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland.
A doctor at the Duke School of Medicine, alarmed by these publications, told me these Duke Press articles are a form of academic support for terrorism.
In addition to calling for the destruction of Israel, the 2025 article is attributed to anonymous authors. Duke Press has essentially concealed this “scholarship” so the public can’t see who is calling for the destruction of Israel. Would Duke Press ever publish an anonymous article — or any article — calling for the violent destruction of the Palestinian-controlled territories? I highly doubt it.
The Ftouni article states: “I would like to thank the editorial team, Samera Esmeir, Susana Draper, and Ramsey McGlazer.”
All three editors are anti-Israel activists. Esmeir signed a letter “calling on scholars and librarians within Middle East studies to boycott Israeli academic institutions.” Draper and McGlazer signed a letter titled “Academics Boycott Columbia University,” stating, “We endorse and reiterate the demands of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment: divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.”
Judith Butler is a member of the Critical Times Executive Editorial Board. Butler outraged many when, according to The JC, she publicly described the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led pogrom — in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and many others were taken hostage and sexually assaulted — as “an act of armed resistance. It is not a terrorist attack.”
In a 2023 Duke Press book, The Cunning of Gender Violence, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian writes:
Israeli ideology treats the colonized Palestinians as a demographic threat to be eliminated. Andrea Smith (2003) writes in her work on the sexual colonization of native peoples that the native Other is rendered “sexually violable and ‘rapeable’” within the framework of colonialism. The treatment of schoolgirls within the Israeli biopolitical colonial regime similarly can be read as constructing them not just as disposable but also penetrable ‘Others,’ especially through the use of guns.
She adds, Israelis “carry their rifles as an extension of phallic power.”
The language clearly portrays Israelis as sexual predators or sexual monsters. Given the longstanding perceived connection between Jewish people worldwide and Israel, this is even more problematic.
The book is part of a Duke Press series. The series editors are Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, and Robyn Wiegman.
Grewal and Kaplan both pledged in 2021 to promote the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel “in the classroom and on campus.”
All three editors signed a “Scholars Against the War on Palestine” 2023 letter calling for a “permanent ceasefire now,” stating, “We stand with Palestinians everywhere.” The letter relentlessly attacked Israel and did not mention — a single time — Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, or the hundreds of hostages being held at the time by Hamas-led terrorists. Some of these hostages remain today in Gaza in horrendous conditions. The words “Hamas” and “hostages” did not even appear one time in the letter.
Such severe anti-Israel bias helps explain how Duke University Press apparently found no problem with a journal article stating that Israelis view Palestinians as rapeable.
In 2024, the Transgender Studies Quarterly journal, a Duke Press publication, published an article in which the authors explain, “the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) [are] referred to by resistance movements as the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF).” The authors then immediately used the term “IOF” twice in the column. For example, the authors discuss what they call “an IOF missile ostensibly on its way to destroy lives in Gaza.”
This article makes it clear that Duke University Press is being used as part of the “resistance movement” against Israel.
Duke University Press has a long history of publishing antisemitic works. For example, “The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability” by Rutgers University professor Jasbir Puar, published in 2017, updated blood libels against the Jewish people. She states Israel specifically targets Palestinian children to maim them and then profit from their incurred disabilities. Like other Duke University Press authors, she compares Israelis to Nazis.
In 2018, I reported that seven members of the Duke University Press Editorial Advisory Board signed initiatives related to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The Duke University Press website explains that during the peer review process, the publisher “performs an intellectual gatekeeping function, ensuring that only scholarship of the highest quality receives the imprimatur of Duke University.”
The Duke University Press peer review process is apparently a colossal failure that puts hateful, antisemitic content into the world, year after year after year.
Duke University Press is functioning at times more as an advocacy organization for promoting anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian positions than as a scholarly publisher. Perhaps Duke Press should change its name to “The Palestinian Point of View Publishing House.”
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
The post Duke University Press Is an Anti-Israel Defamation Machine first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Security Warning to Israelis Vacationing Abroad Ahead of holidays
A passenger arrives to a terminal at Ben Gurion international airport before Israel bans international flights, January 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – Ahead of the Jewish High Holidays, Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) published the latest threat assessment to Israelis abroad from terrorist groups to the public on Sunday, in order to increase the Israeli public’s awareness of the existing terrorist threats around the world and encourage individuals to take preventive action accordingly.
The NSC specified that the warning is an up-to-date reflection of the main trends in the activities of terrorist groups around the world and their impact on the level of threat posed to Israelis abroad during these times, but the travel warnings and restrictions themselves are not new.
“As the Gaza war continues and in parallel with the increasing threat of terrorism, the National Security Headquarters stated it has recognized a trend of worsening and increasing violent antisemitic incidents and escalating steps by anti-Israel groups, to the point of physically harming Israelis and Jews abroad. This is in light of, among other things, the anti-Israel narrative and the negative media campaign by pro-Palestinian elements — a trend that may encourage and motivate extremist elements to carry out terrorist activities against Israelis or Jews abroad,” the statement read.
“Therefore, the National Security Bureau is reinforcing its recommendation to the Israeli public to act with responsibility during this time when traveling abroad, to check the status of the National Security Bureau’s travel warnings (before purchasing tickets to the destination,) and to act in accordance with the travel warning recommendations and the level of risk in the country they are visiting,” it listed, adding that, as illustrated in the past year, these warnings are well-founded and reflect a tangible and valid threat potential.
The statement also emphasized the risk of sharing content on social media networks indicating current or past service in the Israeli security forces, as these posts increase the risk of being marked by various parties as a target. “Therefore, the National Security Council recommends that you do not upload to social networks, in any way, content that indicates service in the security forces, operational activity, or similar content, as well as real-time locations.”
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Israel Intensifies Gaza City Bombing as Rubio Arrives
Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip September 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Israeli forces destroyed at least 30 residential buildings in Gaza City and forced thousands of people from their homes, Palestinian officials said, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived on Sunday to discuss the future of the conflict.
Israel has said it plans to seize the city, where about a million Palestinians have been sheltering, as part of its declared aim of eliminating the terrorist group Hamas, and has intensified attacks on what it has called Hamas’ last bastion.
The group’s political leadership, which has engaged in on-and-off negotiations on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal, was targeted by Israel in an airstrike in Doha on Tuesday in an attack that drew widespread condemnation.
Qatar will host an emergency Arab-Islamic summit on Monday to discuss the next moves. Rubio said Washington wanted to talk about how to free the 48 hostages – of whom 20 are believed to be still alive – still held by Hamas in Gaza and rebuild the coastal strip.
“What’s happened, has happened,” he said. “We’re gonna meet with them (the Israeli leadership). We’re gonna talk about what the future holds,” Rubio said before heading to Israel where he will stay until Tuesday.
ABRAHAM ACCORDS AT RISK
He was expected to visit the Western Wall Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem on Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hold talks with him during the visit.
US officials described Tuesday’s strike on the territory of a close US ally as a unilateral escalation that did not serve American or Israeli interests. Rubio and US President Donald Trump both met Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Friday.
Netanyahu signed an agreement on Thursday to push ahead with a settlement expansion plan that would cut across West Bank land that the Palestinians seek for a state – a move the United Arab Emirates warned would undermine the US-brokered Abraham accords that normalized UAE relations with Israel.
Israel, which blocked all food from entering Gaza for 11 weeks earlier this year, has been allowing more aid into the enclave since late July to prevent further food shortages, though the United Nations says far more is needed.
It says it wants civilians to leave Gaza City before it sends more ground forces in. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have left but hundreds of thousands remain in the area. Hamas has called on people not to leave.
Israeli army forces have been operating inside at least four eastern suburbs for weeks, turning most of at least three of them into wastelands. It is closing in on the center and the western areas of the territory, where most of the displaced people are taking shelter.
Many are reluctant to leave, saying there is not enough space or safety in the south, where Israel has told them to go to what it has designated as a humanitarian zone.
Some say they cannot afford to leave while others say they were hoping the Arab leaders meeting on Monday in Qatar would pressure Israel to scrap its planned offensive.
“The bombardment intensified everywhere and we took down the tents, more than twenty families, we do not know where to go,” said Musbah Al-Kafarna, displaced in Gaza City.
Israel said it had completed five waves of air strikes on Gaza City over the past week, targeting more than 500 sites, including Hamas reconnaissance and sniper sites, buildings containing tunnel openings and weapons depots.
Local officials, who do not distinguish between militant and civilian casualties, say at least 40 people were killed by Israeli fire across the enclave, a least 28 in Gaza City alone.
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Turkey Warns of Escalation as Israel Expands Strikes Beyond Gaza
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (not seen) at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
i24 News – An Israeli strike targeting Hamas officials in Qatar has sparked unease among several Middle Eastern countries that host leaders of the group, with Turkey among the most alarmed.
Officials in Ankara are increasingly worried about how far Israel might go in pursuing those it holds responsible for the October 7 attacks.
Israel’s prime minister effectively acknowledged that the Qatar operation failed to eliminate the Hamas leadership, while stressing the broader point the strike was meant to make: “They enjoy no immunity,” the government said.
On X, Prime Minister Netanyahu went further, writing that “the elimination of Hamas leaders would put an end to the war.”
A senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up Ankara’s reaction: “The attack in Qatar showed that the Israeli government is ready to do anything.”
Legally and diplomatically, Turkey occupies a delicate position. As a NATO member, any military operation or targeted killing on its soil could inflame tensions within the alliance and challenge mutual security commitments.
Analysts caution, however, that Israel could opt for covert measures, operations carried out without public acknowledgement, a prospect that has increased anxiety in governments across the region.
Israeli officials remain defiant. In an interview with Ynet, Minister Ze’ev Elkin said: “As long as we have not stopped them, we will pursue them everywhere in the world and settle our accounts with them.” The episode underscores growing fears that efforts to hunt Hamas figures beyond Gaza could widen regional friction and complicate diplomatic relationships.